


more than a fantasy

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cabin Fic, Coulson has hang ups about sex, F/M, First Time, Forgiveness, Future Fic, Snowed In, Undercover Missions, but it's fine Daisy is gentle, post 5x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:59:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Post-5x10.Daisy and Coulson meet up again, and their mission leads them to a cabin in the snow.





	more than a fantasy

It’s Daisy who gets the fire started.

He wonders if she learned that when he put her in the safehouse in the woods, or if she had acquired that skill previously, in her pre-SHIELD life. It used to feel strange to think about her pre-SHIELD life, her brain somehow resisting the idea that there was a time when Daisy wasn’t there, in his life. But now that she’s no longer in it Coulson spends a lot of time thinking about it, Daisy’s life on her own.

Spends a lot of time thinking about all the things he’s missing.

“We should get out of these clothes as soon as possible,” Daisy says, opening drawer after drawer in search of some clothes. She finds a couple of t-shirts but no pants. She shrugs, going to undress in the next room.

Coulson follows her lead, both too worried about the state of their shivering bodies to be delayed by modesty. He worries about Daisy, who took a fall while they were in pursuit outside, drenching her clothes. They make do with their tops, Coulson gets to keep his boxers, miraculously dry. The ranger’s t-shirt is big enough that it offers Daisy a bit of protection for the legs, too.

They went into the snow in search of a murderer.

But the visibility was minimal and at some point they realized they were in danger of being lost to the snow themselves.

“Thank God for these park rangers cabins, uh?” Daisy comments, as she throws a second blanket over her shoulders.

Coulson nods, not knowing how he should act around her now that they are not focused on a mission.

“I only wish Mr Park Ranger had left us something to eat other than… sachets of soup?” he says, inspecting the contents of the cupboard. “With no electricity how are supposed to…?”

His question dies when he sees Daisy pointing at an iron grill over the fire, a teapot over it.

“Very Davy Crockett,” Coulson comments. “Or someone else who also boiled water in a fire.”

“Relax, city boy,” Daisy teases. “I think I can manage the soup for once.”

They’re not really hungry, but they need to get warm quickly, and they have just spent an hour running through the snow in search of a shadow, ending breathless and exhausted. They need the energy.

Coulson sits by her as she prepares the soup for both. He tries not to stare but it’s hard - it’s been hard since he saw her at the ski resort, since their host _introduced her_ , under a name Coulson knew to be fake, to him. They had both played it well, spy instinct kicking, to the point where they were able to chuckle about it once they found a corner of the party to speak alone. It was hard not to stare then, because even though Daisy hadn’t said she was leaving forever, that she only needed space to work out some things, after two months without her on the base Coulson was beginning to lose heart.

What an appropriate figure of speech here.

Coulson was losing (his) heart.

_We have a problem_ , he had told Mack over the comms. What kind of problem? _Daisy’s here_ , and Mack’s silence reflected his own stunned reaction when he saw her across the room.

He shouldn’t have been so surprised. An Inhuman working closely to those who want to destroy their kind, a trail of bodies left to inspire fear in the general population. Daisy had followed the same clues as SHIELD, and she had arrived at the party with the same suspicions as Coulson.

They were bound to bump into each other at some point of the investigation.

Daisy, trying to pretend she’s used to the whole snow resort scene for rich people. Coulson, under his own name.

Even now, hours later, he finds it hard to believe she’s here, in front of him.

She sits down in from on the fire, on the typical animal fur rug. Fake fur, in this case. She sits cross-legged and Coulson takes a while to imitate her, comfortable on the floor, yes, but having to negotiate a less flexible body.

“How’s the ankle?” Coulson asks as Daisy passes him the mug with the sad watery soup.

He watches her body go under the blankets, and he guesses she is rubbing the spot, checking the swelling.

“It wasn’t too bad,” she says.

The fall caught her by surprise and she had already sprained her ankle before she could use her powers to stop the falling. Coulson had climbed down the ravine with difficult, shouting her name when he couldn’t see her. They saw the cabin just as they were walking towards each other in the snow.

Coulson tries the food. Daisy smiles at his grimace. “Sorry it’s not something tasty,” she says. “Like a grilled cheese sandwich with a special ingredient.”

She sounds nostalgic and Coulson is in awe that she even remembers at all.

He sips on the soup again, this time appreciating how it spreads warmth all over his body. He watches Daisy do the same, but being extra careful closing her lips around the rim of the mug.

“What happened to your lip?” he asks.

“You noticed? I thought I had done a good job with the makeup.”

“You did,” Coulson tells her. “No one would notice unless they know your face.”

She stares at those words for a moment. Coulson wonders if he’s said something wrong.

“Two nights ago,” she explains. “This new anti-Inhuman group-”

“We’ve been looking into them too, yes.”

“Yeah, I know,” Daisy says and smiles knowingly, and he gets it, that she’s obviously been keeping an eye on things, from the outside.

She draws the line of her bottom lip with her thumb, a little bit of make-up coming off, showing the cut underneath.

“I was slightly outnumbered,” she says.

“Please, be careful,” Coulson reminds her.

She nods. It was one of the things he said when she left. He pleaded, possibly. He understood - he had betrayed her, even though Daisy pretended it didn’t hurt as much as it did for the sake of the threat they were facing at the moment.

After they finish eating the move closer to the fire, and closer together. Daisy sticks her foot out from under the blankets, spread her toes to the warmth of the flames. Coulson can see her legs, but then again his own legs are exposed too.

Sitting by the fire with Daisy makes him feel nostalgia for something that has never happened before. They didn’t do this, even though there was, for a moment, the possibility (Coulson thought about it, he was decided to come back to that cabin with apologies and a cupboard worth of junk food). Only now Coulson realizes that seems to be a recurring theme between them.

Between them.

If there is still such a thing.

Coulson would be happy with whatever version of “between them” Daisy wants to concede.

“This is nice,” Daisy says, breaking the silence. “I mean, if we forget there’s a murderous Inhuman on a rampage out in the snow.”

“We’ll get them,” Coulson reassures her.

She nods, seemingly accepting his hopeful _we_. Back in the party she was the one who offered to work the case together, but Coulson hadn’t dared hope that offer would extend further than the evening.

He hasn’t dare hope for much lately.

Perhaps he is protecting himself.

She shifts in her seat and suddenly she’s close to him, her body next to his, radiating heat.

He’s missed her, he thinks, and he wants to tell her, about the little mundane moments in which he misses her (in the mornings when he takes his coffee, during missions, he misses going to sleep knowing she’s close). He wants to tell her that he’s tired of so many absences, that he hates himself for provoking them (not just this time, before this, after Hive, because Hive would have never met Daisy if Coulson hadn’t brought him back just because he needed his revenge). Above all he wants to tell Daisy how happy these moments with her make her, and it doesn’t matter if they are brief.

He is about to open his mouth to at least try ( _I have to_ ) to tell her some abridged version of all this when - turning his head - he finds Daisy’s mouth.

The kiss is hot - no, he doesn’t mean _that_ (though of course it’s that too, it’s Daisy), he means they are so close to the fire their faces are hot and in shades of pink and Coulson can feel it as Daisy kisses him.

It’s short and sweet, but it leads to a second kiss once Daisy realizes he is receptive. The flames from the fireplace seem to caress their faces as Daisy opens his mouth and pushes her tongue inside and then lets Coulson do the same to her, a slow dance where they are both very careful with their longing.

They keep kissing and the slow, sweet thing becomes something else, and Coulson realizes - with trepidation, with fear, with an acceptance of his own limits - that Daisy is going to make love to him. He touches the length of her neck, pressing pause for a moment.

“I know this doesn’t mean you’ve forgiven me but-”

“Coulson, it wasn’t about forgiving you,” she says, her voice sounding whole against Coulson’s shaking words. “I forgave you the minute it happened. It was about-”

“All the people I put in danger,” he finishes for her. It’s the same impasse they came upon before she left. Daisy thought Coulson had gambled the lives of billions bringing her back to the present, Coulson believed he was protecting the earth, that there was no saving the day without Daisy. Irreconcilable points of view.

“Not just that,” she says, and she drops her mouth to Coulson’s neck, surprising him. “I was also scared.”

“Scared?”

“You had such faith in me,” she says, her voice low and strange, or maybe it’s just that he can’t see her eyes. “When I couldn’t and - that’s scary, that you wouldn’t let me sacrifice myself.”

“I couldn’t,” Coulson corrects her, burying his face on her hair, messy, still slightly damp despite the fire. He draws a long breath, taking in the scent of her, trying to ground this in reality, because it feels more like a dream to him.

“I know,” she replies.

He knows they’ll have to talk more about it. That she needs to finish the explanation - what is she so scared of? And how can Coulson make it up to her? What’s going to happen tomorrow, when the snow stops falling?

Daisy lets the blankets fall from her shoulders, bunch around her legs. She gives Coulson a look, urging to follow her lead as she takes off the oversized park ranger t-shirt. He stares at the big scar on her left shoulder, he didn’t even get to see how she got it, right before she had to go into the Framework to save them all. Coulson tugs at his own t-shirt, offering her his scars in kind.

They go at it very slowly, like they are trying to get to know each other again, after what’s happened. They’re already mostly naked and it’s easy to slip into each other, in front of the fire. Daisy runs her fingers over his arms, brushing her thumbs along muscles and scars as if she’s trying to memorize his body, or maybe to heal old pains, Coulson is not sure. He’s not a shy person but he feels self-conscious against Daisy’s tenderness, and a bit guilty, because he’s not sure what he’s done to deserve it.

“Is this okay?” she asks, holding her fingers against the strip of flesh on his arm where real skin becomes prosthetic.

“Yes,” Coulson replies, breathlessly, realizing how long it’s been since anyone touched him like this, his longing for any kind of contact mixing with his longing _for Daisy_.

He’s not as brave about touching her as she is, but little by little his hands start travelling the length of her thighs, up her ass, pausing on the small of her back. The flashes of light from the fireplace appear on the corner of his eyes like stars.

“I’m so sorry about everything,” he tells Daisy, as his fingertips fall on the curve of her ribcage. He wants to badly to make it up to her, to erase all the pain he’s caused her over the years.

“Sshh,” Daisy shuts him up, closing his mouth over his, pushing her tongue against him and making Coulson arch his whole body into the kiss.

She puts her hand over his heart, over his scar, and that calms him down. In her kiss he can taste the beginning of something metallic, the cut on her lip opening under so much attention. He begins to apologize but Daisy only kisses him harder. He’s a bit embarrassed by how quickly he becomes aroused, despite all his anxiety.

She takes him in her hand and guides him inside her, Coulson whimpers when the moment comes, surprised that she is wet, and struck by a intimacy he had forgotten how to feel. Daisy fucks him slowly, and so gently, letting him get used to the weight of her, to her body around him. The flames seem to lap at him like ocean waves as Daisy pulls him deeper, a sweet undertow tipping him over the edge. 

Afterwards he can’t speak for a while, not just because he’s breathless, body turned liquid like melting snow by his orgasm, but because he’s overwhelmed by it all. He’s overwhelmed by Daisy.

They lie on their side, on the rug, Coulson wrapping her arms around Daisy as they both watch the fire dance in front of their eyes, as they listen to the wood creaking as it burns, as if it were the noise the needle of a record player makes before a song starts. Daisy presses her back against his chest, chasing warmth even though Coulson knows there’s no more need to worry about hypothermia.

“This is a bit of a cliché, uh?” she comments, holding tightly to Coulson’s arm. “The fireplace, the fur rug?”

Coulson chuckles. He remembers, for the first time in decades, the romance novels he used to steal from her mom, with the garish covers, how avidly he read the filthy bits, imagining himself to be the heroine (the books were always written from the point of view of the girl, and she seemed to be having more fun anyway) more often than not. The picture here - Daisy in his arms in front of the fire, both naked and soaking up the afterglow - does seem like something out of those books.

“Yes, except for the killer we still have to catch,” he reminds her.

He doesn’t want to dampen the mood, but he doesn’t pretend this is a fantasy. Because if this is a fantasy then it means everything that happened between them before didn’t lead here, and Coulson doesn’t want to do that. A fantasy means there’s no tomorrow, there’s no hope of it happening again.

“Yeah, we still have to do that,” Daisy agrees, and her voice doesn’t sound like she thinks he’s killed the mood.

_She said “we”_.

His heart thumping.

Daisy draws his arm even closer, until it's’ wrapped around her middle. She doesn’t seem to mind it’s the prosthetic. She seems to cherish its warmth just as if it were real.

“But it’s still snowing,” Daisy points out. “And we still need to rest if we want to be of any use tomorrow.”

Coulson buries his head against the back of her neck, hugging her tight.

He draws a long breath, taking in her scent (now mixed with his, mixed with the evidence of their connection, their pleasure in each other).

He closes his eyes.

_She said “tomorrow”_.


End file.
